Hike #888; Ashland to Shamokin

 Hike #888; Ashland to Shamokin

10/25/15 Ashland to Shamokin with Jillane Becker, Gregg Hudis, Lyz Hagenbuch, Ric Giantisco, Eric Pace, Lara Nycum, Mr. Buckett (Jimmy Mathews), Timothy Kovich, James Quinn, Jennifer Berndt, Carl Manzi, James De Lotto, Jason Itell, Megan Reid, Stefanie Statler, ?, Pete G. Wilcox, Serious Sean Dougherty, Nancy (Echorules), Cindy Simmonds, and Elmer Glick!

Our next hike would be another point to point, this time a connecting section heading west from where Jillane and I had started backpacking in 2010, Ashland PA. We had visited the town and toured the coal mine, as well as Centralia, but I had never connected a hike west of there. I had wanted to do it, and to bring a large group to Centralia for a while, but it just fell off the table with all the other stuff I’ve been doing.
Since backpacking twice a bit further west, and having these sections barely unconnected with everything else I’ve done, my interest in returning to this point grew very strong. With all of the hikes I have done, only two more would get me to a connecting point in Sunbury.
Even if it were not a connection, the coal country region is absolutely fantastic. It’s not what anyone thinks about when they consider hiking, but it’s really better than a lot of the conventional places I know of.
My goal was to start the hike off where Jillane and I had headed up the Ashland Ridge back in the Summer of 2010. It had been over five years since I’d been to that point, and wanted to feel that connection heading west. We met in Shamokin, at the lot in the middle of town, then shuttled in as few cars as we could heading to the east. We used a parking lot near a food market on the east side of town, and began by heading in back of it and walking the same railroad tracks Jillane and I had followed briefly in 2010.

Ashland PA

We walked on the tracks only a short while until I saw the opportunity to head into the woods parallel. There are other railroad rights of way up in there Jillane and I had discovered, and so I wanted to walk those for a bit. The first section of one right of way was nice and clear enough. There were some big puddles, but nothing too bad. As we walked, Pete noticed some sort of an old abutment to the right of the active tracks. We only followed the abandonment for a short while, as it ended and it was necessary to go back to the active tracks.
I felt the connection when I looked to the right and there was a large abandoned chimney to the right. I took a picture of this on my backpacking trip five years prior. We walked on from the abandoned line to the west toward Rt 61, Hoffman Blvd. We turned right here.
There was an abandoned stone building on the right we looked inside of. Much of the area was depressed. There were a lot of store fronts in Ashland, most of which had no one living over top of them in the apartments. Still, it was better than it was in 2010 when we headed through.
We crossed Mahonoy Creek on a road bridge, and reached the middle of town. There was a large stone step thing going up to the left that I had to check out.
The steps didn’t seem to go anywhere. I ran up to the top of them and the rest of the group just kept on going ahead, missing the overlook. There was a pretty nice view from the top of it to the east. There appeared to be some sort of a level grade, possible rail right of way for an old coal breaker or something, at the top of the climb. There were no markers or anything at all stating the significance of this large, interesting set of steps. I suppose it could have been some coal magnate’s stately manor house at one time too, but nothing exists at the top now.
Some of the group, realizing they had passed by something interesting, came back to climb the steps, by which time I was already down and onto the next thin

Steps in Ashland

Rt 61 continued on and went to the left, up hill through the center of Ashland, but straight ahead was another interesting set of steps heading up hill on the north slope out of town, part of the Locust Mountain. Jillane and I had also hiked sections of Locust Mountain, a very long ridge, further to the east through Locust Lake State Park and beyond to Tuscarora State Park, but this section was rich in coal and had the characteristic scars associated with the area.
I climbed up the stairs, past some overweight people taking pictures and struggling with the little climb. The stairs continued beyond a statue that was placed at the bottom to the woods and street at the top.

Steps in Ashland

When I got to the top I could see the rest of the group slowly siphoning up the street to this next statue from the steps they had missed by assuming and going too far ahead! I was on my way down before anyone even got to the steps yet, but this was fine because there was a mini mart on the corner that everyone would want to stop at anyway. I didn’t know what kind of food stops we’d come across on this hike, so I cautioned everyone to get what they needed.

Excellent view from the top of the steps down Rt 61 in Ashland.

There was an abandoned house on the slope just behind the mini mart. There are a lot of those around, but I was surprised there weren’t more. We continued from here up the main street, Rt 61, up hill into Ashland. I thought it was funny there was a generic restaurant that read only “Tacos” on the sign. It was tempting.

Downtown Ashland

There was an abandoned house on the slope just behind the mini mart. There are a lot of those around, but I was surprised there weren’t more.
We continued from here up the main street, Rt 61, up hill into Ashland. I thought it was funny there was a generic restaurant that read only “Tacos” on the sign. It was tempting.
We continued on the main street up hill, and were joined by DeLotto along the way, who parked on street after running a bit late meeting us. We continued on the main drag, with a good view back east in the direction we’d come, and turned right when we got to 17th Street.
This took us up hill somewhat steeply, then around a loop above a section of a park. We headed slightly down to the right, looking as we walked north, to our left, to see if we could find a good route into the woods. I wanted to try to cut a corner through these woods to Rt 61 north out of town. The park to the south, right of us, appeared to have a level grade in it that might have been part of the former Lehigh Valley Railroad which once had an industrial spur into the area.

We hiked to the left in somewhat crappy weeds, among the worst we’d pass through on this hike, until we got to the former Reading Railroad right of way. This was a good clear grade leading both east and west. We turned to the west on this to follow it out toward Rt 61.

Former Reading Railroad in Ashland along Locust Ridge.

We didn’t follow the railroad bed for too long; a woods road led off to the right more in the direction I wanted to go, so we headed slightly further up the Locust Ridge following this. The road split in two a short ways up, and we came across an area that had an abandoned camper and lots of other random junk around. I walked further ahead, but then it started looking like someone was living up there. We didn’t want to continue up that way in case there was, so we turned left through woods and soon reached Rt 61. We descended steeply on the slope next to the highway, then turned right to follow it. We were now within sight of where abandoned Rt 61 turns away from the current alignment.

We headed up the highway only a short distance and cut to the left onto the abandoned one.

Abandoned 61

The town of Centralia is very interesting, world famous for having disappeared due to the underground mine fires.
Rt 61 in this section was abandoned because the underground fires caused the highway to crack and heave. It was not safe to keep open, and so the highway had to be closed. We were told by one of the women who grew up in the area that at times the east or westbound lane would be closed while the other remained open. Jason pointed out to me that it appeared they had tried to pave over the highway to keep it open where the cracks were, but that efforts weren’t fruitful.
Centralia was first founded in 1842, at which time it was called Bull Head after a tavern. When the streets of the town were first laid out it was called Centreville, but there was already a town in Schuykill County with that name, so it was changed to Centralia. The town grew after the coal mines opened up, and the railroad arrived in 1854. Legend has it the town was cursed by a local minister David Ignatius McDermott because of the activity of the Molly Maguires, a secret Irish society responsible for arson, kidnapping, and murder including Alexander Rae, the founder of Centralia. He said that the Roman Catholic Church would one day be the only building remaining in Centralia.
At it’s peak population of 2,761, Centralia was a booming center with many places of business and several blocks of homes.
At its peak the town had seven churches, five hotels, twenty-seven saloons, two theaters, a bank, a post office, and 14 general and grocery stores.
The town’s decline began with the great depression, when the coal companies were closing down. The fire started in 1962, when most agree fire was set to the town dump and never properly extinguished, though some believe it was just the spreading of a fire that had raged underground from a colliery in 1932.
The conditions were worsened due to the bootleg miners that began using the mines during the Great Depression. They took part in the dangerous and often deadly task of “pillar robbing”, the process of removing valuable coal from the pillars left by the mining companies to stabilize the mine roofs. This caused several collapses that in later years made it nearly impossible for fire fighters to access the underground fires.
People began leaving Centralia in the 1980s and formal eviction of residents, as well as demolition of buildings began in the 1990s. Today, only four homes remain in Centralia, making it Pennsylvania’s lowest populated individual municipality.
The remaining residents were given permission to remain in 2013, with the caveat that the land goes to the state when they die.

Abandoned 61

The old highway was covered in graffiti. There was much more than there was when Jillane and I had first visited five years prior. It was actually quite interesting looking, with all of the colors used on the pavement contrasting with those of the Autumn foliage in the trees above.
Mr. Buckett and Eric joined us in this section, totally surprising me. It was great to see them out, and we all continued on together.
As we made a corner on the highway, we saw a huge group of people wearing orange vests. There were a couple of vans from a college at the southern entrance, so we figured this must be an outing for a class. It indeed was, and we chatted with them briefly as we went by. They must have thought I looked nuts, going by in a blazer. We told them we were going about fifteen miles.
We were off of the old highway before long and into Centralia. The cemetery was still there, off to the left of us. We walked all around it, checking out the oldest graves. I think I found the oldest one in the cemetery, one of a Mr.Mulligan, dated as having died in 1828, far earlier than I was expecting to find in such a cemetery, especially since that predates when the town was officially founded.

Centralia mine fire holes.

Outside the cemetery, there was an old pickup truck with a flat bed on it, and an old guy sitting inside. Pete was already over chatting with him.
It turns out that this guy, Joe I think his name was, was one of the surviving former Centralia residents. He told us that he had gotten out of town before all of the forced evictions had happened. With him, he had several history books, which we could see on his passenger seat. One of them was a photographic history of the people of Centralia which he graciously allowed us to look at. Eric said that he was going to buy a copy, because the man told us it was available on Amazon.
Pete showed him a photo of what we thought was the main street through Centralia.
“Nope.” the guy said matter of factly. “Nope, that’s Locust Avenue”. He then went on to tell us where the gas station was in it, and a few other businesses. We asked him a few questions, and Pete got some of our “interview” on video.
Some of the group went ahead to check out the mine fire holes. I knew where a few of them were from our 2010 visit, and we found them. The smoke was not all that visible coming up from the holes now, even though it was a cooler day. Once we regrouped, we began heading to the west. We found our way to the abandoned right of way of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and began following that.

View on Locust Mountain

It took a little time to get everyone back together, but we were soon on our way. Some of the group was down on one of the old paved Centralia Roads, while others were on the railroad bed.
The rail bed was clear and easy enough to walk. We followed it for a while, and stopped along the way to climb a cool culm pile to the right, which had a nice view to the northwest. We then descended back to the railroad bed to continue westbound.
Eventually, the railroad bed got to be pretty overgrown. ATVs use a lot of the area heavily, but the route went up and down, not ahead on the railraod bed. We opted to go left, to follow the woods roads along the upper part of the Locust Ridge. This went on well for a while, but eventually the road sort of petered out. We had the choice of either going up higher, which seemed to go back slightly the way we had come, or to continue down on another old road to the upper part of a clared mining area. We opted to follow that down hill. The trail didn’t continue on from here, so we basically continued along the top of the cleared pile of coal fragments heading west. Jillane found a plant fossil in one of the rocks along the way.
We soon had to head down hill a bit because there was no clear route remaining toward the top. We saw a giant earth mover and opted to head toward that. It had been sitting there for a very long time, sort of rusted in place. It must be one of those defunct or bankrupt companies.
Once we reached the earth mover, which was stone dead, we continued on the access road along the ridge. This led to an abandoned camper building thing, like one of those contractors trailers.

Abandoned

I decided to have a look inside, and it the building was full of bloated and surely insanely skunked Coors Light and tons of boxes of junk. There were surprisingly shoes my size, but I didn’t keep them. We did however find a stylish hat that I wore for a while, and tons of other random things. I found a pleather jacket, a train engineer’s cap, a watch, and a lot of other random stuff. We threw some into a sack and continued on. The trees and such growing out of this thing showed for certain that no one was caring for it, and the roof was about to come in.
Gregg realized he had lost his phone somewhere between this point and Centralia, and so he, Stefanie, and Mr. Buckett and Eric had all gone back early to look for it. Fortunately, they found it and had a good time walking around former Centralia.
We headed down the roadway further, and it came to a sort of abrupt end. Jason I think it was spotted some sort of a vague footpath going off to the right. I had cut directly into the woods, and was fighting through some weeds. When I tried to make my way back to what he had found, I slipped on a rock and landed on my elbow, smashing a delicious bottle of Weyerbacher’s Blithering Idiot that I’d been drinking, much to my dismay. Fortunately, the bottle did not cut my hand, and I got away with only some scrapes on my wrist from sliding along the rock. We followed the vague trail down hill from here until we surprisingly came across an official public trail.
The trail continued down hill to a lovely little pond, which came as a surprise.

Wightman's Dam pond

This area was known as Wightman’s Dam. The dam and pond take it’s name from Charles Wightman, a local who moved to the site around 1900. The pond is now a sort of memorial park to Charles “Whitey” Wightman, son of the original Charles, who was a local mine worker, Reading Railroad fireman, and avid fisherman who had a fishing store.
The pond was originally called Halfway Pond, because of it’s location about halfway between Mount Carmel and Centralia. It supplied drinking water and provided for fire hydrants in nearby Mount Carmel.
We at first tried to walk on the up hill side of the pond, but that is just a loop trail that would take us back the way we had come. Beyond that it was just too overgrown. We opted instead to head along the south side of the pond, then to a footbridge over the outlet, and walked the dry outlet down hill. We ended up bushwhacking a bit, and I had thought we’d eventually find the railroad bed again. It turns out that the Lehigh Valley line that passed through had crossed to the other side of Rt 61. We reached a clearing, with a woods road access that took us back down to 61. I left my bag of goodies hidden behind a round of a cut up old tree so that we could come and get it later.
We turned left on 61 for a bit, and eventually reached a public park on the left. It said no dogs were allowed, and both Cindy and Elmer’s dogs were with us, but I figured if we hurried up we could just go across on the edge and make our way up the slope. There was a road up there to a coal mining area, which becomes Hillside Drive to the west. It’s quite level, and from the maps it looks like this or something nearby was the former site of the Susquehanna Colliery. It was definitely graded as such when we got up there, it could easily have been a railroad at one time.

View near Mt. Carmel

Jillane and Cindy tried to go the way that some of the others tried to take, even though my way was the best. They ended up in some thick weeds a bit further to the west. We made it out and continued on the old roadway west with some nice views to the north.
After passing some old pavement on the closed road section and a behicle barrier, we continued to East Buick Street.
Now, looking at it it’s possible that Buick Street where we were walking it could have at one time been the former Reading Railroad spur that also went to or near to the Susquehanna Colliery. We would be on this railroad bed ahead, and on the Pennsylvania RR bed we had possibly been on further than that ahead.
We had to head down hill a bit at the next intersection, and soon followed a bit of 7th Street.

Reading Railroad bed

To the left of the road, I was surprised to see an ATV access path. We opted to check it out. I was not expecting to find an intact abandoned Reading Railroad grade there. I knew there had been one there at one time, because I’d downloaded historical maptech maps of the area to my phone to use for this hike, but this was far better than I’d expected it’d be. The right of way was a totally clear and soft cinder base going in both directions. We turned to the west and continued on our way with great ease.

Old culvert in Mt. Carmel

The railroad bed skirted the Mt. Carmel high school on it’s south side, along the lower end of the Locust Mountain, and continued along other coal mining areas. There was soon a bridge over what must have at one time been an access road to these mines, but has since been covered over with ore dumps to the south of us. The culvert was still there but completely inaccessible today to pass anywhere beyond the railroad right of way.
The railroad bed ahead also sort of disappeared. I knew that it used to continue through from looking at my map, but the fill had been removed. We had to go down and come back up, but we soon picked up the old right of way again. We continued to follow it easily from here to the Mt. Carmel Cemetery. We skirted one cemetery to the south, then the Mt. Carmel one on the north. We turned left and walked into the cemetery because there was a giant puddle in the right of way, and it looked as though it might be inaccessible for a bit.
When we got in the cemetery, we took a quick break and then headed to the west. We could see the railroad used to continue around the cemetery and then cut to the south. While in the cemetery, a guy who worked there stopped to talk to Lyz and Ric. I walked over to make sure we weren’t having a problem, and the guy was really nice. He told us that when he was a kid the trains still ran on that line we were walking. I forget what comment I made, but something about it being that long ago, to which he sort of jokingly said “How old you think I am? Well fuck you then!”. We laughed and said goodbye, heading along the right of way turning south.
The right of way looked cut away as we continued. We were looking ahead at Mt. Carmel Junction heading into Locust Gap. We climbed down the cut away section to the active tracks, then followed a parallel gravel road, probably another former track, to the left. We then cut through some woods back over to the active track heading to the south. In retrospect, we probably should have just turned right for an easier route, but it looked to go into some very active industrial sites, and I figured we’d just head south and connect with another right of way that Pete had seen from his car on the drive down. We followed the tracks for a bit, with an industry on the left side, and old coal mining operations visible above. We crossed an access road and continued from what the google maps showed as “Alaska, PA” into Locust Gap.

Big spider we saw

After checking out a giant yellow spider and reaching where Locust Gap gets narrower, and the railroad turns into the cut, we headed down hill, off trail rather steeply to a former parking area along Rt 54. We re-grouped, then headed across the highway, turned right, then left at a pull off into more woods. We bushwhacked down and over the tiny Locust Creek, and back up the other side into a formerly clear cut area that was in all likelihood another old coal mine. We reached an ATV path that must have at one time been some sort of rail.
Several ATV paths went off in all directions, and the same one continued into Locust Gap to the south. None of my maps, both historical maptech or my atlas of railroads of the Mid Atlantic in 1946 shows anything of this being a railroad. Still, there is really no way it could not have been.

Possible old rail grade

I still have no maps to prove it, but the route was rather level, and I even spotted some railroad ties here and there. It was probably a strip mined coal area that had tracks until the place went out of business. Both the former Reading Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad were parallel below us, across the other side of Rt 901, and the industry on the hill had to be reached somehow. We continued following the route, and passed some guy in a pickup truck who didn’t give us a hard time. The route was a good shelf which at times appeared that it could have been two or three tracks wide.

Old coal mine shaft

While we walked, only Jillane, Pete, and I were at the rear of the group. Pete spotted out the corner of his eye the concrete structure that covered over an abandoned mine shaft, so we all went down to have a look at it.
There was a giant pit behind it, certainly the collapsed former mine far down. The shaft didn’t seem to have a bad odor coming from it like so many do, although this one had obviously had a ton of trash dumped into it. We continued from here back up to the likely railroad grade heading to the east.
The rest of the group got pretty far ahead, and we reached a point where the grade we were following became inaccessible. It continued on but was badly overgrown. One route headed down hill to the right, while a woods road to the left seemed to get overgrown really quickly. Some of the group was waiting for us when we got there, but others continued ahead. Lyz, Ric, Sean, Jason, and Megan were all with them. Lyz and Ric would find us later, but the others we wouldn’t see again for the rest of the trip, although they apparently had a good time after their off trail trek sliding down giant coal piles.

Former Pennsylvania Railroad

There ws no way I could get in touch with them, and my phone had no service at this point. I made the executive decision after a short trek ahead to go back and we’d head down hill toward Rt 901. We followed the woods road down, then cut off of it to the left through sparse undergrowth to the highway. We didn’t walk the highway too long, but saw giant tree-less coal hillsides and watched them looking for the rest of the group. We then cut down hill rather steeply toward the active former Reading Railroad tracks.
Once on the tracks, I could see directly below that the abandoned right of way of the Pennsylvania Railroad was in perfect walking condition, another nice cinder based path. We slid down the next hill to this right of way, and got to check out two old box culverts under the Reading line once there.
The right of way took us with ease to the village of Excelsior, end of Iron Street I believe. We headed out to Upper Main Street and turned left back to the active former Reading Railroad tracks. Some of the group was already visible ahead on the active tracks. I think it must have been everyone we were missing, but I’m just not sure. They didn’t wait up for us at this point. As we walked, I could see another right of way break off to the right, and then bridge abutments from where this line would have gone over the Pennsylvania Railroad. This was a sign to me that the abandoned grade below would again be accessible. I went first and headed down to the grade, and fount it to be perfect.

Former Pennsylvania Railroad

We reached the Pennsy line and turned left, now following closely along the Shamokin Creek on a clear grade. The right of way was on a shelf, and soon there was a giant stone wall above us on the left side, which must have held up the former Reading Railroad.
Here, Ric peered over the wall with a familiar “Allo? Who goes dere?”. He started reciting lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with the Frenchman at the castle. We went back and forth with quotes from the movie for some laughs. I was surprised to see them at this point, but the two of them managed to climb down and re-join us. I think the rest of the group remained on the tracks most the way, which is too bad because the route we used was rather outstanding I think.

Pennsylvania Railroad bridge over Shamokin Creek

The railroad bed soon led us over Shamokin Creek on a concrete bridge. There were abutments of other bridges to the right that led to more mining areas. There was a rather large cut out area on the other side of the creek, and I’m not sure what kind of workings were once there.
After crossing the bridge, which had a tree growing out of the up stream pier, moving one of it’s top rocks over, we passed a former spur track that I believe must have been the one that went to Kulpmont (according to the maps). We then continued through narrows with high rocks to the right of us, and passed a couple in a pickup truck. They stopped and chatted with us, and even gave us some tips on how to get to the top of the mountain for some outstanding views.
We continued along, and reached a rather open area. Elmer and his faithful dog headed up the slope to get an even better view before we moved on.

Weird slope

Just to the south of here, more ATV paths including one insane looking hill climb was off to the right. There were beautiful red leaves and incredible outcroppings I would have just loved to climb up, but we didn’t have the time. It was starting to get pretty dark, and I wanted to get done with the worst of the wooded sections by sunset. The rest of it from Ranshaw to Shamokin I didn’t think would be too tough to hike in the dark if we needed to.

Former junction site in Ranshaw.

The right of way stayed clear until we got to Industrial Park Road. There, a bridge was missing, so we went down and came back up the other side onto a more overgrown section of right of way. I was ahead of the group, hurrying through. There was a park to the east of us, as we were now heading north, but I opted to stay on the rail bed. There were several fallen trees that made it kind of hard to get through. We still climbed over them, and skirted a back yard, before we got to where it was pretty clear.
An ATV path joined near the bridge overpass of Quaker Run. The right of way became very easy to walk again from here. We then reached yet another junction site, this time with a line heading to the southeast. I’m pretty sure this was the spur line that once led to the Colonial Colliery.
The right of way remained clear and on a good fill above town. We could see people on the streets of the village of Ranshaw from the grade, who looked sort of bewildered at us as we walked by above. I suppose no one really uses these paths without an ATV. The right of way reached the north side of town and opened up to the right, where there was an old lady standing in her yard, asking what we were up to in a friendly way. I stopped and told her what we were doing, and in a grandmotherly way commented on how that’s nice and something about it getting dark. I pointed out that the moon was starting to show nicely right over her house, and she wandered back and forth in the street trying to see it. I told her she needed to be up on the rail grade to see it at this point before moving along.
Tim and I reached the road first, and we held up to let everyone catch up.

Coal Run bridge

Now that we were out in the open, it seemed like we might have a little more daylight, but it didn’t last long. Old Excelsior Road went up hill to the left of where we were standing, and it looked like the rail right of way might be obliterated by development and roadway improvements, but I could see a vague pathway into the weeds ahead.
I decided to head on into the weeds and scout it out, and sure enough the Pennsylvania Railroad grade continued, rather easy to follow for now, on to a former bridge over Coal Run. Everyone followed me on through. If we had waited a couple more years to do this hike, it might have been impenetrable weeds.
The railroad bed became more unrecognizable on the other side, but good ATV trail continued on ahead until we came out at an abandoned department store just off of Rt 61

Abandoned department store

We headed down to the front of the thing, and it surprisingly was open in the front. We peeked in, but there wasn’t really anything to see. I thought we could all go inside, but there was a car that was parked at the other side of the lot. When some of us were over by the door, the car turned and faced us, then made like it was leaving the parking lot for 61. As I walked closer, he had not left at all, but parked a little further up and was watching us. We decided to just continue on ahead. There was no sign of the old railroad bed, but there was a gravel lane connecting to the next lot.

Weird old car

We walked around the back of a car dealership, in another large lot, and headed to another access road. Before heading to the next strip mall lot by way of the access road, there was an interesting old car sitting out at the far end of the dealership lot. Tim and I had to go over and inspect the thing with it’s weird paint job and weeds growing through it.
Next, we headed into another lot which used to be an Ames department store. It had been a long time since I’d seen an Ames. The sign still had that on it along the highway.
We used to have an Ames in my home town of Washington, and I’d gone there with my mom or grandmother countless times growing up, with their slogan “Bargains By the Bagful”. The store chain closed in 2002, shortly after the legendary closings of local K Marts where I bought over 40 pairs of shoes at an average of a dollar a pair. I supplemented that by purchasing another six or so pairs at Ames.

Pipe

We walked across this lot, which seemed to be used as a storage place for giant pieces of conduit pipes. We of course had to get in some of them.
We were so close to the end, but this was the beginning of my “more bullshit” additions to the end. I laughed a lot for this last section because just when it seemed like we had smooth sailing and only a few minutes left of the hike, we were doing some other bullshit thing somewhere, which was usually cool, and fortunately not too much of a drag for everyone involved. Most everyone had a really good attitude about the whole thing.

Once at the far end of the lot, there didn’t appear to be a good way to walk other than going up to Rt 61, but it looked like there might be a cut through going to the back of the store front. We opted to follow this and see what came up.
We found a power line clearing, which seemed like it was another railroad bed. It was clear, so we started following it. To my surprise, it led to a fine foot bridge over the Coal Run, and then to the actual main Pennsylvania Railroad bed we’d been following, again totally clear.
We had a nice clear walk out to Feeney Street, with the only obstacle being an old bridge over Coal Run, undecked. The ties were still in place across the bridge and in good enough repair, so we got right across.
From here, we cut directly across into a parking area for some sort of storage center or something. We kept to the right, with the building farther to the left, and at the far end of the lot came to a gated gravel road, built at least part on the old railroad bed.

I knew we were on the railroad bed when we got to yet another old railroad bridge over the Coal Run. The main line appeared to have gone straight, but the bridge was in deplorable shape. It had no decking remaining, and the former walkway areas were gone too. If it were lighter, it’d have been easier to get across the thing, but with this group, with dogs, and in the dark, this was looking like it was out of the question. I looked down to the stream, and the close side would have been easy enough to wade across, but there was a high stone retaining wall on the other side that we’d not be able to climb up.
When I looked down stream a bit, I saw yet another railroad bridge. This must have been a spur to an industry, or even a cut over to the former Reading Railroad, still active, which was again close to this line. Either way, this looked like it would be a better crossing.

When I got to the bridge, it turned out not to be a great crossing. Jillane and I got over, and she went looking for a better way to go, but the group would not have an easy time with it. There were ties missing in places that would make it hard for the dogs. Even I had to go very slowly as not to slip from the side. The ties themselves were badly rotten, and unlike most railroad bridges, these ones did not have good bracing underneath that would help to support them if they snapped. I helped the group get across, and we handed Cindy’s dog over, while Elmer simply walked with his on top of the girder. James sat on the girder and shuffled himself across pretty well.
We came out of the woods onto Water Street. I was so happy to be out, and now only a few blocks from the cars. Every time we had a bridge or something, I added that it was more bullshit, and now we would be done with it. By this time it was like a joke, and I found another old foundation on the left side of Water Street to walk around on. No one had to follow me, because we were just parallel with the street, but most everyone did, as I wandered onto the old foundation and found some old brick ruins.
We came down on the other side, and a cop car was going by. It turned out there was a police station right on the corner of Water Street and Franklin Street, and some of them were outside talking. The former Reading Railroad tracks were right there, and there was a little roadway along them, so we continued following them into town. The rail line seemed to just sort of sneak through town between buildings in a place where it seems strange to still have an active railroad, and we reached the intersection of Shamokin Street and Independence Street in the middle of Shamokin, where we could see our cars straight ahead. The others we were missing had already been back and taken their cars. We hung around and tried to figure out what everyone wanted to do for food, and during this time one of the police officers pulled up.
He was a really cool guy, and when he heard what we were doing, he was sincerely impressed. This was of course something that people just don’t do.

The hike left me wanting to see more, as they always do. Just ahead, the Reading and Pennsylvania Railroads appear to swap, where Reading becomes abandoned, and the active line was switched over to the former Pennsylvania line. The next leg of these lines is among the coming hikes I look forward to the most.